Can you imagine? At a time when a young man’s fancy is to indulge in a summer hockey camp, our Babel MP has spent the past week talking about prostitution. Not that he has necessarily found it a learning experience. He is likely to be as ignorant on the subject at the end of the week as he was at the start.
And would you believe that Babel’s MP is being paid extra by the taxpayers to study his government’s bill on prostitution? He could learn more on a Friday night in July walking down Dunlop Street in his home town. The truth is, he is not on the Justice Committee to examine the Justice Minister’s bill on prostitution. He and his Conservative colleagues on the committee are there to block any change or improvement in the bill.
And they will block changes. Despite a rising chorus of objections to the bill, it will pass committee without any interference or correction. It will then be quickly approved by the Conservative dominated Commons in the fall as well as the government dominated Senate and become law. It will last until legal objections send the bill as enacted to the Supreme Court. You might expect that the Supreme Court will then, once again, throw it out as useless.
What the Conservative bill is in reality is a disgrace. It just moves the action on Dunlop Street and other strolls across Canada further up the alleys in the dark. It increases the criminal element’s involvement in the sex trade. It makes it even more unsafe for the prostitute and the customer. It makes people out as criminals when they are just seeking a very human need.
The bill demonstrates more than ever the disgusting ignorance of this Conservative government. For the Minister of Justice to tell the committee that his bill is going to eliminate prostitution is not only a stupid statement but shows the real intent is to drive prostitution out of public sight. It just makes the sex trade uglier and more criminal than it need be.
And yet the Babel MP and his Conservative colleagues sat this week and ignored experts on the sex trade. They were not there to listen. In a failed government of failed ideology, they were there to ignore reality, again.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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